The Germanicus Mosaic (18 page)

‘What other soldier would it be?’ he said, playfully. ‘You don’t believe in Aulus’ conspiracy, do you? Although he did say that the roundhouse was used for “other purposes”. Shall we look inside? We may find something else.’

He led the way, turning up his nose at the fish heads. The stink seemed to have become worse than ever. He looked at the bloodstain and the fleas, but apart from that we found nothing, although we spent a long time searching.

At last he kicked over the little pile of rotting bedding. ‘That piece of scale-armour must have come from Crassus. I wonder what he was doing here? Checking on his property perhaps. I don’t believe what Aulus said. Rufus and Faustina might have come here “for other purposes”, but I can’t imagine that any soldier ever did. How would they know about the roundhouse? They wouldn’t go up and down this lane, when there is a perfectly good gravelled one not a mile away.’

I did not have time to answer. With the perfect timing of a spectacle in the amphitheatre there was the sound of hooves passing in the lane. More than one horse, too, and moving at a fair pace. Junio shot me a startled look and hurried to look out of the door-space. A slow, reluctant smile spread across his face.

‘Well?’ I said, straightening up painfully. I had been examining the bedding.

‘Soldiers,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t know how many, I only saw the last one before he turned the corner. But several. Cavalry.’ He grinned again. ‘If I didn’t know you better, I would think you had arranged it, simply to prove me wrong.’

‘I wonder what they
are
doing here,’ I said. ‘I am sure Marcus would have mentioned it if he was expecting them. Perhaps we should go back to the villa. He will have had his shave by now, and there is nothing more to be discovered here. I found this.’ I showed him a hairpin which I had picked up from the floor.

Junio grinned. ‘So there has been a woman here!’ He examined it for a moment. ‘Fine metal – too fine for a slave. No, it isn’t Faustina’s after all. Very well, I admit it. Aulus was right. So now we know what our soldier was doing in the straw!’ He looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Regina’s, do you think?’

‘It could well be.’ I too had been struck by the workmanship. ‘I think it is.’

Encouraged by my find, we resumed our search with fresh enthusiasm, but we discovered nothing.

‘Poor woman, whoever she was,’ I said at last, swatting at a biting flea. ‘This can’t have been a pleasant love-nest. Unless the fleas came here later, on the pigs. Perhaps they did. We don’t know if Crassus kept his hogs here before or after Regina left.’

‘I keep forgetting about Regina,’ Junio said. ‘I wonder where she is? She is an expert on poisons, too, of course. Listen! What’s that?’

He hardly needed to ask. It was the sound of hooves. From the other direction this time, and only a single horse. I looked at Junio. He looked at me. The horse stopped, there was the sound of dismounting armour, and footfalls at the door.

We stood facing it together, like a pair of naughty schoolboys awaiting the paedagogus. The cavalryman seemed to fill the narrow doorspace. He ignored Junio and spoke directly to me. ‘You are Libertus, the pavement maker?’

I gulped. If Marcus had sent for me, there would have been a formal message, greetings, repeated verbatim. I did not like the sound of this. A thousand petty misdemeanours floated across my memory. The time I had helped myself to a couple of carrots from an army supply cart on the road, the night I lied my way past the sentry at Glevum after the gates were shut. Had my favourite joke against the garrison commander somehow come to his ears, or (I felt my heart sink through my sandals at the thought) had Governor Pertinax suddenly fallen from Imperial favour? If he fell, Marcus fell, and then I too could expect to be hauled off to Glevum in disgrace. Or had Marcus simply finished his shave and become impatient of waiting? I found my voice. ‘I am Libertus.’

‘Citizen. You must return to the villa at once. There is something which they think you should see.’

Better, but not good. Who were ‘they’? If the man had meant Marcus he would certainly have said so. Being messenger for the great confers status of its own, as I knew myself.

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I am coming. Help me to the path, Junio.’ Under cover of leaning on his arm, I slipped the armour scale and the hairpin into his hand. If there was trouble, I preferred to have my evidence in safe keeping. It was much quicker returning down the lane, and it seemed a very short time before we were back at the villa gates.

There were five soldiers in all; the other four were waiting with their horses just beyond the gate. I was about to speak when Aulus came hurrying out to meet me, wearing an air of conspiracy even more overpowering than he was.

‘A word, citizen.’ He drew me aside, away from my escorting cavalryman.

I allowed myself to be shepherded to a verge under the trees, where Aulus bent forward, towering over me, and whispered urgently into my ear. The smell of sweat and stale beer was staggering. ‘I hope that I did right, citizen, in telling them where you were. I know you meant to be alone.’

I braved the odours to look him in the face. ‘How did you know where I was?’

‘I saw you come down the back path, earlier, and go into the trees. I thought at first you were looking for Paulus. When you didn’t come back, I guessed you had gone to the roundhouse.’

That answered my question at least. It was not easy to get past Aulus.

He gripped my arm. ‘Then the soldiers came, asking for Marcus. They had orders to report in person, but I said that you were working for him, and he would be angry if you were not informed at once. He knows they are waiting – he will be here himself in a moment – but he doesn’t know what they have brought. Better that he learns it for himself, and I thought you should see it first.’

‘See what?’ I said, although I had a sinking feeling that I knew.

Aulus gestured towards the waiting men, and I saw for the first time that there was an extra horse. It was tethered to a tree, with something long and heavy strapped across the saddle, something roughly wrapped in hessian but still dripping from either end.

I strode towards it, trying to look as much like Marcus’ agent as I could, dressed as I was in a simple tunic, with dirty straw in my hair. ‘Let me see it,’ I said, imperiously. ‘I am a citizen.’

The soldiers looked at one another doubtfully.

‘On Marcus’ orders,’ I said. That worked. The soldier who had escorted me stepped forward and pulled away the wet, coarse cloth.

It was a man, or it had been a man, once. The head and hands dangled gracelessly downwards, the legs hung limp and awkward in death.

‘Found him in the river,’ the soldier said, grasping the short, curly hair and lifting the head upwards to reveal the face. ‘The armour would have pulled him down anyway, but the cloak was weighted with stones. We would not have found him if we had not been ordered to search. I don’t know if it is the man you want – the rats have been at him as it is.’

The water-swollen face was too gnawed to recognise, but I moved forward and, slipping my hand under the arming-doublet and the scaled tunic, I found what I sought. I brought out the chain, and read aloud the inscription on the tag. ‘“If found, return to Crassus Claudius Germanicus, for this is a fugitive slave.” This is the man.’

‘I am sorry, pavement maker,’ the soldier said. ‘We did not look for name-fetters. He seemed to be a soldier, not a slave. He has no helmet, though he might have worn one once. The currents there are fierce. No weapon either.’

‘There was a dagger at least,’ I said. ‘In his back.’ It did not need me to say so; the dreadful bloodied rents told their own story. This man had been stabbed in the back, several times from the look of it, and thrown into the river afterwards.

‘He was robbed, too,’ the soldier said. ‘See where the purse has been cut from the thong? Strange, it seems to have been a civilian pouch, slung underneath the scale-shirt. That is awkward to manage. A soldier usually wears his purse under the wristpad on his arm.’

Junio was beside me, and he looked at me, his eyes shining. ‘So,’ he said, ‘that is why Daedalus did not return. It might be, then, as I suggested.’

I silenced him with an eyebrow. ‘We shall see. But look, here comes Marcus now, and Andretha with him. And still unshaved. That will not please him.’

But Marcus was, in fact, looking extremely pleased with himself. ‘Ah, Libertus, my old friend. There you are. I have been hoping to speak with you.’

I had kept him waiting. He was in good humour, but it was not wise. I said, hastily, ‘Humblest apologies, excellence. I was delayed about your business. These men have made an important discovery. They have found Daedalus.’

Andretha, who had been bobbing like a salmon in his wake, followed my gaze and let out a stifled sound. ‘Dead?’

‘And robbed,’ I said, and watched his face turn whiter. Junio did well, I thought, to suspect Andretha, but the steward had not known that Daedalus was dead, I was sure of that.

I do not know what I was expecting Marcus to do. Thank the soldiers, perhaps. Be surprised. Be interested at least.

In fact he gave a cursory glance at the lifeless bundle. ‘They have done well,’ he said, ‘but it hardly matters now. The man was only a slave. As well for him he was not found alive, impersonating a soldier. But since he is dead already, he is beyond our power.’

‘But excellence,’ I said, ‘the question of Germanicus . . .’

He interrupted me, holding up his hand with an air of lofty indulgence. ‘Ah, yes, the murder of Germanicus,’ he said. ‘You have done your best for me, as usual. But this time, it seems, my methods are superior to yours. The matter is resolved.’

‘Resolved?’

‘Indeed.’ Marcus tried, and failed, to keep the triumph from his smile. ‘While you were out this morning. Rufus has confessed.’

‘Rufus?’ I must have sounded as startled as I felt. Rufus, the scrupulously truthful! It was the last thing I was expecting.

Marcus looked smug. ‘I had Andretha announce this morning that if anyone named the culprit I would grant unconditional pardon to the rest of the household. I thought it might sharpen Andretha’s memory, but I need not have worried. Rufus came to me almost immediately and confessed. I had him locked in the librarium.’

‘The librarium?’ I echoed, and heard Marcus sigh. I was beginning to sound like a schoolboy practising rhetorical intonation. I resolved to stop repeating everything he said, and tried to look more intelligent than I felt.

There was a punishment cell, elsewhere, Marcus explained, but he had ordered this as a temporary measure. Rufus was to be taken back to Glevum in chains. ‘Crassus was a veteran and a citizen, after all,’ Marcus said, almost gleefully, ‘and there is always a shortage of convicted criminals for the entertainments.’

It would be a pity to waste the opportunity for winning popular acclaim, he meant, by simply bringing in the torturer to flog Rufus to death. There would doubtless be a hearing, of sorts, before he was thrown to the wolves and bears.

I nodded. ‘May I talk to him?’

Marcus looked reluctant. ‘Is that necessary, now? The matter is settled, and I am anxious to get back to Glevum,’ he said fretfully. ‘There is the matter of the sale of the villa to be negotiated. I may offer for it myself, and Lucius will have to be consulted.’

The question of the murder was settled to
his
satisfaction, perhaps. I was not so sure. I thought quickly. ‘Surely, excellence, he should be consulted about Rufus, too? After all he is the owner of him now. He should at least be informed.’

Marcus frowned. I was afraid for a moment that I had overstepped myself, but he gave a rueful smile. ‘True!’ he said, smacking his palm with his baton in that characteristic way which showed his irritation. ‘Oh, Mercury! I had overlooked that fact. Though Lucius is a Christian; they have these sympathetic ideals. He will be unlikely to object to my amnesty. As the nearest relative he might even apply to deal with the boy himself, flog him and have him sent to the mines, perhaps, or trained up as a gladiator instead of going straight to the arena. All right, Libertus, you speak to Rufus. Persuade him not to appeal to his new master. Persuade him that the bears would be a better fate.’

It might even be true, I thought. The beasts were savage, but they were quick. A sentence to the mines would mean a lingering brutal death, especially for a lightly built musician of Rufus’ sensibility. Even with the gladiators there might also, given Rufus’ girlish good looks, be humiliations of a more intimate kind. It occurred to me, for the first time, that Rufus might already have suffered something similar at Crassus’ hands. Or not his hands, perhaps. What a man did with his slaves was his own affair, but it would help explain why Rufus hated his master enough to murder him. Presumably he had murdered him, since he had confessed. But when, and how, and what about Daedalus?

I didn’t like it at all.

I put on my toga to conduct the interview. They had left Rufus in the dark, and when they opened the librarium door for me the sudden light blinded him for a moment. He was sitting huddled on the mosaic floor, his chained neck roped to his shackled hands, and his hands to his ankles, so that he could not attempt to stand, or even raise his head at my approach. I felt a pang of sympathy.

I had worn such bonds myself, they were of the kind commonly used in the slave market, and although it was more than twenty years since I had been captured, chained and sold, I remembered only too vividly how painful they could be. The single rope that links each set of shackles is drawn uncomfortably taut, so that the captive can only sit in one position and the slightest movement tightens them. I knew from experience how cruelly the iron chafes with every least attempt to ease the limbs, and how swiftly agonising cramp sets in. I wondered vaguely where Marcus had obtained the fetters, and then realised that Crassus probably always kept unpleasant chains of that kind somewhere in the villa.

I left Junio to wait outside and heard the door lock behind me. I set my candle on the wall-spike, but even so without a window-space the room was very dark. Rufus looked up at me, pale but defiant in the candlelight. Someone, I noted, had given him a thrashing already. There were weals on his arms, and a thin stripe of blood coloured the shoulder of his tunic. Andretha, I guessed, furious at his own close brush with execution.